As you may have heard, Rob Ford, the mayor of Toronto, smokes crack cocaine. We've seen a…
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Once published, the world would shit its pants. The Photoshop possibilities would be endless. People who hate the president would demand his immediate removal from office, citing his addiction as a clear dereliction of duty. It would open all kinds of conspiracy theory floodgates. If he's secretly doing coke on the side, what ELSE is he doing? Human trafficking? Whale blood painting? Covert drone attacks against whitey? And who else is doing coke in the White House? His wife? The veep? THE KIDS?! The barrage of speculation would drown out everything else and make it virtually impossible for anything to get done (just like the US government as it stands now!).

People who love the president would still cry out PHOTOSHOPPED! every chance they got. Or they would use the coke photo as a proof that our drug laws simply don't work. Someone at the Times would pen an insufferable editorial entitled, "Mr. President, the time has come to step down," encouraging him to focus on his health and not the plight of the country. It would be really pedantic and annoying.

Then the president would make a remarkably eloquent public statement about the whole affair and people who love him would be like OH MY GOD I DIDN'T THINK I COULD LOVE HIM ANY MORE THAN I ALREADY DO BUT THAT SPEECH HE MADE WAS THE FINEST MOMENT OF HIS PRESIDENCY. He'd remain in office despite his better judgment and we'd all quickly get used to the fact that we had a cokehead for a president. We'd still be arguing about all the same stupid shit, only we'd have a coke photo to go with it. Liberals would be like, "You're still bringing up the coke thing? GET OVER IT," and conservatives would be like, "But he was doing coke while hiding aliens and organizing the Boston Marathon bombing HITLER HITLER HITLER." That's 21st century democracy for you.

As for the history of presidents and cocaine, the most famous example is Ulysses S. Grant, who treated his throat cancer by gargling cocaine wine. Cocaine wine! Rumor has it that Grant was supplied extra cocaine by Mark Twain, which gives "Huck Finn" a whole Tarantino-esque vibe heretofore unknown. I'm gonna write this book and it's gonna have TONS of n-words, okay? Because that's what's REAL, that's how people really talk! Okay, I'm gonna go write five hundred pages in eight minutes now (does bump).

Grant's cancer "treatment" occurred after he left office, however. To find a president who did blow while in office, it helps to check out the history of cocaine itself. The drug wasn't a popular medicine until the 1880s, which pretty much rules out the first eighteen presidents. From 1886 to 1903, cocaine was an actual ingredient in Coca-Cola, which probably means that Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, and Teddy Roosevelt all had a glug while in office. No wonder TR built an entire CANAL.

Snorting the drug became a thing around 1905, but was banned in 1922 according to the link above. That would mean that TR, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Warren G. Harding all could have had a bump without any attendant controversy. Taft was a fatty, so he probably ingested a bit of everything in his time.

After cocaine's prohibition, there are two good candidates for snorting while in office: FDR and JFK. FDR was crippled with polio and likely to try anything to make the pain go away. JFK also suffered from chronic pain. Also, he was JFK, which means he was willing to smoke and snort and bang anything that moved. I UH ER UH DECLARE-AHH THIS COCAINE TO BE SOME MIGHTY FINE POWDAH!

Brian:

Would you accept Kim Jong Un's position as leader of North Korea, if offered? If you're not jumping at the chance, what kind of perks would sway you?

It's a job that offers great pay and has a long history of people underperforming. You could swoop in as dictator of North Korea, install a democracy, establish freedom of speech, hook up the internet, pull the plug on all the nukes, and be hailed as a worldwide hero. AND you'd get to skim off the government coffers while you were at it. Maybe buy a villa in the Seychelles for you and your hot North Korean mistress to use for your own pleasure. After all, you just freed millions of enslaved people. TREAT YO SELF.

The only problem with taking the job is that it places you in mortal danger. There are surely higher-ups in the North Korean military who would be interested in preserving the status quo. They wouldn't be wild about some pasty-faced Westerner barging in and bringing booze and porn and KFC to the masses. They would plan a coup d'état within minutes of you assuming power. And since you would probably have no experience in preventing such coups, you would be overthrown the next day, your body cut into pieces and paraded around the streets of Pyongyang as a warning to anyone who might think about changing the way North Korea does business.

Would it be worth risking life and limb to be able to bring liberty to millions of downtrodden people? To stop the murders and endless imprisonments? Do you or I have the courage to take that job, save those people, and make the world a better place? Probably not.

Alex:

I'm about to eat my kid's half-cupcake. It's been sitting around for three days and he hasn't touched it. Fuck him, right?

Yep. Fuck him. The statute of limitations on that cupcake expired ages ago. I watch my children's plates like a hawk. I'm not letting ANY cupcakes or chicken fingers or piles of Kraft Mac go to waste. Sometimes I jump the gun and they're like WAHHHHHHH YOU ATE MY CUPCAKE and I'm like, "Serves you right, fucko. In this world, you take, or you are taken from." It's an important lesson for them to learn, and I get to have half of a cold chicken nugget in the process. PARENTING.

Chris:

Assuming a full recovery which would you rather have happen to yourself: Kevin Ware's nasty leg break and Sidney Crosby catching the slap shot in the teeth? You have to deal with the initial incident, all resulting surgery and rehab and are subject to the average recovery period, at which point you are back to pre-injury you. I am solidly in the leg breaking camp, as I assumed most would be. Everyone was going on and on about how greusome the leg break was, and while I agreed it was shocking to see I felt that Crosbys actual injury would be far worse to experience. Surprisingly, many friends and collegues disagreed.

I take the broken leg, because you don't see the broken leg coming. You don't have that split second of terror where a hard rubber disk is coming at your face at five thousand miles an hour, where your brain is like WHOA HEY THAT'S GOING PRETTY FAST OH GOD IT'S GONNA HIT MY FACE BEFORE I HAVE TIME TO REACT NOOOOOOOOO. I wouldn't want that memory. Yes, it sucks to suffer a compound leg fracture and have a fucking bone sticking out of your leg. That's all bad. But at least you don't get a heads up. And you can still eat afterward.

There's something much more personal about taking a slap shot to the face. It's like being stabbed versus being shot. Assuming equal damage, I would MUCH rather be shot than stabbed. I don't want to see the knife plunging into me over and over again. That's a whole other level of trauma.

Plus, with the broken leg, you have a much more fun story to tell. You get crutches, and you can roll up your pant leg to show everyone the scar OOOOOOH. You totally feel like an athlete. When you get a puck to the face, all you get are horrified stares from people wondering why your jaw is wired shut and why you're drinking liquefied ham through a straw. I'll take the Ware injury any day.

Ian:

I grew up in right on the Mississippi in Wisconsin and went to college right on the Mississippi in Minnesota. Amazingly, the river seems to be the only dividing line between the dickheads in Minnesota who played “Duck, duck, grey duck” and EVERYONE ELSE in ‘Merica who played “Duck, duck, goose.” My wife, a Minnesotan, says they used to go around the circle saying “Purple duck, green duck, yellow duck, GREY DUCK,” and then run like they were on fire. This is dumb. So my question, is Minnesota the only “Grey duck” state?

In my experience, yes. I moved to Minneapolis from Chicago when I was five years old, and the whole "Grey Duck" thing completely fucked me up. Also, when you cut in line in Minnesota, the kids would say, "Don't bud!" Again, that completely threw me off. I'm fine with saying "pop" instead of "soda", but DUCK DUCK GREY DUCK makes no goddamn sense. Frankly, it's RAYCESS. Why is the grey duck the one being chased? What happens when the grey duck is caught? Is it killed? HATE CRIME.

Mike:

Triangle pizza slices or the grid system?

Triangles. The grid system is completely weird. You get tiny little crust pieces and pieces that have no crust at all. There's nowhere to grip it without my thumb getting third degree burns from the tomato sauce. It's a complete disaster. The whole reason the grid system was invented was so that people hosting children's birthday parties could get more pieces from a single pie. It's the cheapskate's cut. Half the time, they don't even bother to cut it all the way through. You just end up folding three rectangles on top of one another.

HALFTIME!

Will:

If you could win one of those contests where they provide you with a year supply of something and you could choose ANYTHING what would it be? Normal shitbum stipulations of these contests don't apply either: as much as you want when you want it.

Does air travel count? I assume you're talking about a physical object and not a service. And obviously this is something that should be consumed since a "year's supply" means you eventually run out. There's no such thing as a year's supply of gold. It's just gold. It's not like you say, "Whoa hey, that's all the gold I can eat in a year!" The gut choice would be some kind of food or beverage or vice product: lobster, caviar, fine wine, designer weed, etc. You could ask for a year's supply of cocaine and then sell that cocaine at a tremendous profit, but that violates the spirit of the question. This is something that would be for personal use, which is why I would choose... the Pappy.

I'm no booze snob. I rolled my eyes at all the Pappy talk over the past year. But then my brother-in-law got a bottle as a gift (nice gift) and poured me a glass. Yup. I get it now. GIMME GIMME GIMME.

Stewbeef:

Is butter a bread enhancer or is bread a butter delivery system?

You can eat bread without butter. It's not as good, obviously, but you can. But you can't eat butter on its own (unless you're hanging out in Antarctica, as noted here). That makes the bread the STAR of the bread-and-butter dish. The butter serves at the bread's pleasure.

Mike:

Yesterday, a group of us from work went to a local charity that uses volunteer labor to assemble meal packages for poor and starving people around the world. Our job was to place the ingredients (vitamin powder, dried chicken/spices, soy and rice) into 400 gram plastic bags that are sealed and boxed. As I was dumping soy and rice into the bags, I noticed that the required nutritional content label was on the package. Are the starving recipients of this food really going to read the labels and ponder the fat and carbohydrate levels?

I think the nutrition label gives your aid package an air of authority that an unlabeled package wouldn't have. You're delivering food to possible war-torn areas. Who's to say that an unscrupulous rebel faction wouldn't box up poisoned rice, affix a phony Unicef label to it, and drop it on unsuspecting villagers? I worked on an advocacy campaign for a country where the bad guys would load up planes with refrigerators and bag of nails and shit and then just drop them on people. As weapons. I can't even imagine how horrifying that is. So if I'm someone in desperate need of aid in a place like that, it's probably a good sign to see an official nutrition label on a package of peanut butter crackers. They may be lacking in Vitamin A, but at least I know there's no cyanide in there.

Dave:

I was making lunch for my daughter and I notice I have to violate a rabbit to get at the Mac and Cheese. Poor packaging choice, Annie.

I like to take the end of a wooden spoon and blast right through that rabbit's butt. Really lets it know who's boss. By the way, those Annie's boxes are a ripoff. When my old lady finds a box priced under $2, she hoards them like bread before a hurricane. Here now is a quick ranking of children's organic pasta shapes:

1. Shells

2. Arthurs (terrible TV show though)

3. Macaroni

4. Bunnies

5. Peace signs

6. Spirals

1,345. Anything gluten free

Evan:

What's the worst position to be in on Price Is Right…

The last person called up who only has one chance to guess and 3 assholes waiting to pounce and capitalize even if he makes a great bid and is just one dollar off?

The person who is called up at the start of the show and never makes it onstage (albeit probably because they're a moron and didn't look up how much iPads cost before going to a Price Is Right taping)?

Or the hundreds of other audience members who just get whatever "Thanks for showing up" gift they're doling out that day?

The second. At the very least, you wanna be IN THE GAME. You don't want to have trudged to Burbank wearing your finest U-Wisconsin sweatshirt all for nothing. At least if you make it to contestant's row, you have a story to tell. If you're just some pud sitting in the audience, waiting for your name to be called, you're gonna feel like you're at your company's holiday party, where everyone gets a sales prize except for you. It's horrible. No one goes to a Price Is Right taping just to WATCH. That would be asinine.

Will:

What if Nebraska had put that 7-year-old kid with the brain tumor in for an actual game? Picture it: Big Ten Championship Game, 17-13 Ohio State, Nebraska is at midfield with 1:52 to go with one timeout, and it's 4th and 3. All of a sudden, they sub in the brain tumor kid, whose only dream is to score a touchdown for the Huskers. He takes the hand off and stumbles up the middle. Does Ohio State tackle him?

SEND IN THE GUILT TRIP FORMATION.

Yes, Ohio State tackles the Tumor Boy for a significant loss. Ohio is an insane place with a team that is coached by an insane person. You think Urban Meyer would hesitate for a second with Tumor Boy out there? No chance. He tells his men to AIM for the tumor.

Football is a sport that prides itself on being merciless. That's part of the whole culture—the idea that DURRR DON'T NOBODY GET SPECIAL TREATMENT SO LONG AS THEY CAN HIT PEOPLE IN THE MOUTH DURRRRRR. So you can rest assured that Tumor Boy would get jacked up, and then Rick Reilly would compose a very bad poem about it, and then other commentators would be like, "Tumor Boy didn't STEP UP. He lacked the tumor of a champion out there." And then we'd all kill ourselves.

Jonathan:

What if, near the end of the a highly-contested game (like, say, during the NBA Finals), a scrub player at the line shits himself before taking a free throw? Do they allow him the time to go clean himself up and then take the shot, call for a substitution, or just make him take the shot with shit running down his leg? If a sub is allowed, would this lead to coaches making their awful free throw shooters shit themselves (or, if that's not possible, just puke all over the lane) so they can bring in the best shooter off the bench?

You still have to take the shot. They have mop boys at the ready to clean up your sweat and pick up stray mouthguards. I don't see why those same lackeys wouldn't have to pick a steaming turd up off the American Airlines Center court. No one said it was a GOOD job.

Most players today wear compression shorts under their game shorts, so you're unlikely to ever see an NBA player pinch a loaf directly onto the court, which is a damn shame. Back in the day, guys wore their shorts and a supporter and that was it. There was a free path for any turd to drop down and soil the court. Those were better times. HAPPIER times. By the way, that turd on the court would easily surpass a coke-snorting president in the news cycle within a matter of days. You can get a LOT of TV mileage out of a poopy basketball court.

Mike:

A guy in my building has named his wifi network "ilovefatvagina" (picture attached). 100% chance he's single, right?

I dunno. From the looks of it, he's not picky.

Shane:

I'm on my weekly 6am flight for work, and there's a guy dressed in full scrubs: pants, shirt, AND optional jacket. This guy is a total me first, GLORY BOY doctor, right? I imagine he either works with cancer patients and claims ALL of the credit when they get better, or he's a PA who is totally trying to convince people he's a real doctor.

I hope the flight gets delayed and he's like, "We can't be late! THERE'S A HEART ON ICE WAITING FOR ME IN PRINCETON."

The funny thing about doctors is that you WANT them to be arrogant pricks. If someone is splitting my chest open, I want him to be the cockiest son of a bitch that has ever walked the face of the Earth. I don't want him to be PLEASANT. I don't want him to be self-effacing or emo. "We're gonna open up your left ventricle. And even though I went to medical school in Alabama, I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing!" I want my doctor to be humorless, aggressive, and I want him to recite the Baldwin speech from Malice to people at least six times a day, with no irony.

Email of the week time!

Jon:

A female friend of ours started dating a new guy. About three dates in, the guy sends our friend a text message that says, "Before we get sexual, I have something to tell you. I have a big penis." Our friend texts back, "How big?" He says, "Eleven inches." He sends her a photo. She showed it to us. It's a goddamned thing of beauty. It looks like a baby elephant trunk trumpeting his arrival. Our friend said, "What do I do with that?" I told her, "You suck it. You fuck it. Hell, you fuck half of it if that's all you can do."

Is there any other advice I could have given her? And what do you think about the guy? I think he has to tell girls about that fucking thing, but a text message after three dates?

A picture message! That's insane. Who thinks that's a good idea in the post-Salisbury era? I think it's far better to surprise someone with that anyway. Why warn them? You're just giving them an excuse to run away terrified.